The Christmas Invasion (TV story)
The Christmas Invasion 'is the 2005 Christmas Special of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Russell T. Davies, directed by James Hawes and featured David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor and Billie Piper as Rose Tyler. Overview To be added Synopsis It's Christmas Eve, but this is to be a far from silent night - the cruel Sycorax have come to Earth to enslave mankind and, as ever, only the Doctor can stop them. Unfortunately, he's lying in a coma in Rose's flat... Plot The episode opens with a camera panning around the Earth before quickly zooming in to Jackie hanging ornaments on the Christmas tree in her flat. While placing presents, she picks up and wistfully looks at one she got for Rose before she disappeared. Meanwhile, Mickey is doing work in a nearby garage when he hears the engines of the TARDIS echoing close-by and runs to find it; Jackie also hears it from the flat and runs out to find it herself. The two of them meet outside just in time for the TARDIS to appear in the sky flying in a craze, smashing into buildings before finally coming into a halt with one last collision with a dumpster. The Doctor sticks his head of the doors and revels in his successful arrival in 21st Century London. He greets Mickey and Jackie with an eccentric manner while they eye him up suspiciously; he wishes them a 'Merry Christmas' before collapsing to the floor. Rose emerges from the TARDIS and tells Jackie and Mickey that he's the Doctor. They take him back to the flat, dress him in pyjamas and rest him in bed while Rose uses a stethoscope to confirm both his hearts are still beating. After they leave, the Doctor exhales a misty, golden energy that flies off into space. While Jackie and Rose try to make sense of what's happened, Rose spots Harriet Jones, recently elected Prime Minister of the television, making a statement about a recently launched space probe, Guinevere One making it's way to Mars. However, on it's approach, it collides with a giant, asteroid-like spacecraft which pulls it aboard. That night, Mickey and Rose go out Christmas shopping with Rose still fretting over the Doctor's condition, but Mickey makes her promise to stop for the time being. Before long, however, a four-man brass band, dressed up in Father Christmas costumes start firing on them with weapons concealed in the instruments. Knowing that they're looking for the Doctor and will soon be coming after them, Rose and Mickey rush back to the flat to warn Jackie. Rose tries to convince Jackie of the danger when she spots a new Christmas tree in the corner. Before they figure out who left it there, the tree suddenly springs to life, three sections spinning violently and demolishing everything in it's path. The three of them rush into the bedroom to get the Doctor out, but are soon blocked in by the deadly tree. Jackie and Mickey barricade the door while Rose tries to rouse the Doctor; the tree smashes in and Rose whispers a plea for help in the Doctor's ear, when he suddenly springs up and explodes the tree with his sonic screwdriver. Hurrying outside, the party spot the brass band, whom the Doctor identifies as 'Pilot fish', observing them from below with the remote control for the tree, but the Doctor manages to scare them away with the sonic. He suddenly convulses in pain, having been awoken too soon after regenerating, and warns Rose, Jackie and Mickey that the appearance of the 'Pilot fish' heralds the arrival of something else, before he falls comatose again. Returning him to bed, Rose and Jackie watch the news broadcast the footage from the Guinevere One probe when a viscious alien figure roars over the broadcast. The world's news feeds fly into a frenzy over the confirmation of alien life; Harriet Jones is escorted to the headquarters of UNIT along with Guinevere One project manager Daniel Llewellyn, while they try to convince the world that the broadcast of the creature was a hoax. UNIT technician Sally Jenkins discovers that the probe broadcast from 5000 miles above the Earth, meaning that the signal wasn't from Martian life. At the same time, Mickey hacks into UNIT's mainframe when both they and UNIT receive an audio message from the aliens that the TARDIS won't translate. UNIT gets to work on translating the message while tracking the ship; Harriet secret confers with Major Blake that there's been no sign of the Doctor and orders Blake to make arrangements with Torchwood should he fail to appear. Harriet's right hand, Alex, finishes translating the message, identifying the aliens as the Sycorax who order them to surrender or 'they will die'. However, Harriet orders a reply to be sent, declaring that they will not surrender. Meanwhile, Jackie watches over the Doctor and Mickey comforts Rose. Come dawn, the message reaches the Sycorax who replay with a visual feed of them projecting a hypnotic blue light from their arm. While UNIT try to understand it, various people start falling into a trance, engulfed in the same blue light, and start walking out. Not only in UNIT, members of the public start exhibiting the same behaviour and not responding in any way to loved ones. The police watch all the entraced people start making their way to the tops of high-rise buildings and standing on the edge, ready to jump; reports start arriving that it's happing across the entire planet, a total of two billion people. Unable to think of anything, Rose ponders giving up. Llewellyn tries to figure out the connection between the trance and Guinevere One and determines that all the entranced people possess A+ blood and that the Sycorax are controlling and ransoming the blood type using a sample taken from the Guinevere One probe. As a last-ditch appeal for help, Harriet hijacks the Queen's speech (part of the reason being the royal family being part of the mass trance on the roof) and pleas for help from the Doctor and requests that anybody who can find the Doctor step forward. Rose watches this on the TV and falls into Jackie's arms, crying in despair that the Doctor has left her. Suddenly, every window in London shatters as the Sycorax ship breaches the atmosphere and hovers overhead, plunging half the city into the darkness of it's giant shadow. With no solutions, Rose gets Mickey and Jackie help take the Doctor to the TARDIS to hide until they can figure something out. Meanwhile, the Sycorax directly address UNIT HQ and decide to bring the leaders over the crisis aboard, teleporting Harriet, Alex, Blake and Llewellyn up to the ship, where they are met by the leader of the Sycorax. The Sycorax continue the hold the lives of everybody ready to jump on over them when Llewellyn comes forth and tries to appeal to the leader's compassion, when he draws a whip coursing with electricity and wraps it around Llewellyn's neck, reducing him to bones. Blake is infuraited and steps forth to argue with the leader when he suffers the same fate. The leader then gives Harriet the choice to surrender and have half the world sold into slavery of don't and have one-third die. Below, Rose and Mickey carry the Doctor into the TARDIS while Jackie goes off to collect more food. Mickey and Rose try to use the scanner to see what's going on outside, revealing the TARDIS' presence to the Sycorax; the leader accuses Harriet of concealing it and teleports it aboard. Jackie returns just in time to watch the police box engulfed in a blue light and dragged up to the ship. Unaware that they've been teleported, Rose leaves the TARDIS to find Jackie but is grabbed by the Sycorax; Mickey rushes out to help her but is grabbed as well. Unbeknownst to him, Mickey drops his flask of tea next to the Doctor and it leaks into circuitry below the floor. While the fumes from the fusing machinery surround the Doctor, Rose is selected by the Sycorax leader to speak for the planet; she feebly attempts to bluff the Sycorax into leaving by invoking made-up intergalactic laws but the leader sees through this immediately and ultimately decides that they'll all die. As he rants and Alex translates, the leader's Sycoraxic bellowing starts coming out in English; Rose promptly realises that if the language is translating, it means the TARDIS is translating it, and everybody swirves around to see the Doctor, fully healed, emerge from the box. Flaunting his newly-developed authoritative stride, the Doctor deprives the leader of his weapons and explains the tea that Mickey dropped healed his synapses before pondering on what he looks like and what kind of man he is now. His ramblings are interrupted by the leader, but the Doctor just ignores him and moves his attention to the big red button with which the population are being held under the Sycorax's blood control. Despite his strong, repetitive insistence that the button shouldn't be pressed, he slams it down and the controlled people are freed from their trance. The leader tries to claim they allowed the masses to survive, but the Doctor knows he couldn't have killed them all with that kind of control, their survival instincts would have prevented it. With no more control over the human race, the leader threatens to summon the Sycorax armada and take the Earth by force, so the Doctor draws a sword from another warrior and proposes a challenge. Taking out his own sword, the leader agrees to duel the Doctor for the Earth. The two of them lock swords, moving frantically around the inside of the ship; the Doctor opens an outer hatch and takes the fight outside. The leader starts to get the upper hand and when the Doctor tries to keep Rose from interfering for risk of invalidating the duel, the leader knocks him to the ground and severs his hand, which plummets down to the city with his sword. As the leader proclaims victory, the Doctor gets to his feet, finally familiar with his identity and luckily within the first fifteen hours of his regeneration cycle, which allows him to regrow his hand. Rose throws him another sword and they resume the duel, at the end of which the Doctor emerges victorious; he agrees to spare the leaders life if he and his warriors leave the Earth and never return, to which he agrees. However, as everybody walks away, the leader picks up a sword and charges for a strike. In responses, the Doctor thrusts a satsuma, which had been in his dressing gown, at a button and the floor opens up beneath the leader, sending him falling to his death with the Doctor coldly remarking he doesn't give second chances anymore. Before they leave, the Doctor stands before the Sycorax hoard and tells them that when they go back to the stars, never to return and they tell others of the Earth, they should tell them that it's defended before everybody teleports back down and watches the ship leave. As Rose and Mickey celebrate their victory, the Doctor confides in Harriet that the universe is full of creatures that are noticing how noisy the Earth is being and warns her that more may come. Jackie arrives and greets Rose, Mickey and the Doctor while off to the side, Alex tells Harriet that Torchwood are ready; looking grimly at the jubilation of the others, she orders them to fire. Suddenly, five green energy beams fire towards the sky and converge into a greater beam that strikes and obliterates the Sycorax craft as it flies away. While the Tylers and Mickey watch the explosion, the Doctor looks at Harriet in disgust, considering her action to be murder, though she insists it was defence, using the Doctor's warning as an excuse to justify herself. Furious, the Doctor warns her not to challenge him and, before he leaves, secrets addresses to Alex six words that he dictates will bring down her government, "Don't you think she looks tired?" He and his friends then turn and leave; Alex refuses to tell Harriet what the Doctor says and soon walks off himself, leaving her standing alone. That night, the Tylers and Mickey prepare Christmas dinner while the Doctor picks out his new attire from the TARDIS wardrobe. Settling on a brown and blue pinstripe suit, he joins them and watches Harriet on the news as she battles against allegations from reporters that she's unfit for office and on grounds for a vote of no confidence. Their attention is suddenly drawn outside to a snowfall and meteor shower overhead (which the Doctor admits is the aftermath of the ship's destruction, the snow, in reality, being ash). He is, though, happy to proclaim that a new era has begun on planet Earth; nobody is able to deny the existence of aliens now, everybody witnessed it. Deciding it's time to continue his travels, the Doctor asks Rose, who reaffirms her faith in him even after his change, if she wishes to stay with him and she delightedly agrees. Pointing to the stars to pick a destination to start with, the Doctor utters that wherever they go, it'll be 'fantastic', and they all stand and watch the skies. Cast * The Doctor - David Tennant * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper * Jackie Tyler - Camille Coduri * Mickey Smith - Noel Clarke * Harriet Jones - Penelope Wilton * Danny Llewellyn - Daniel Evans * Alex - Adam Garcia * Sycorax Leader - Sean Gilder * Major Blake - Chu Omambala * Sally - Anita Briem * Alan - Marvyn Williams * Sandra - Sian McDowall * Jason - Paul Anderson * Mum - Cathy Murphy * Policeman - Sean Carlsen * Newsreader 1 - Jason Mohammed * Newsreader 2 - Sagar Arya * Newsreader 3 - Lachele Carl Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''The Christmas Invasion'' page on '''Doctor Who Website